“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”<\/p>\n\n\n
Peter almost ended his relationship with Jesus before it got off the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n
He listened to Jesus’ teachings for a short time, and then Jesus caused Peter’s fishing net to overflow with fish after being lowered into waters where the experienced fisherman knew<\/i> there were no fish to be had.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
A miracle.<\/p>\n\n\n
And then?<\/p>\n\n\n
Overwhelmed with the sense of his own sinfulness, Peter wanted to put distance between himself and the Son of God.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It’s almost as if Peter, anticipating God’s rejection, decided to beat Him to the punch.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Preachers and evangelists are always saying “People have to hear the bad news before they’re ready for the good news”.<\/p>\n\n\n
By this they mean “I need to convince unbelievers they are God-haters, incapable of good, and unworthy of God’s love.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Worthy, in fact, only of death and hell.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
(I can’t imagine a better foundation for a close, lifelong relationship with God!)<\/p>\n\n\n
What if the thing people really need convincing of is that God has not rejected them?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Peter almost ended his relationship with Jesus before it got off the ground. He listened to Jesus’ teachings for a short time, and then Jesus caused Peter’s fishing net to overflow with fish after being lowered into waters where the experienced fisherman knew there were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5885,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5884\/revisions\/5885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}